University of North Carolina activist Maya Little stated that students urinated and spat on flowers placed at the base of the Silent Sam statue in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The flowers were meant to honor the late Richard Monroe Gray of the Georgia Infantry.

Antifa radicals have been back on the UNC campus on multiple occasions since Silent Sam was torn down, with cultural anthropology professor Dwayne Dixon lording over a team of left-wing radicals operating out of Durham, North Carolina. Sam Carey, a mixed martial artist, was back on UNC as a third riot broke out in recent weeks.

Thom Goolsbee led an effort on the university board to restore fallen Silent Sam, and UNC Chancellor Holt eventually determined that she would bring Sam back but move him to a different location on campus — not in his noble perch on the campus square facing Franklin Street, where he stood for more than 100 years since 1913.